The “Back of the Island” is a familiar name given locally to the south coast, its eastern end more widely famed as the Undercliff. All this side is marked by sterner features and sharper outlines than the shallow creeks and flats of the northern shore; and through its geological history the Undercliff makes a peculiar exhibition of picturesqueness, while by its winter climate it is one of England’s most favoured nooks.

Here a narrow strip of shore lies for miles walled in to the north by a steep bank several hundred feet high, sometimes presenting a rugged face of sandstone cliff, elsewhere rising in the turf swell of chalk downs. But the bastions of rock thus displayed rest upon a treacherous foundation of gault clay, expressively known as the “Blue slipper,” which, saturated with water, has given way so as to cause repeated landslides and falls of the super-incumbent strata, tumbling the lower slopes into a broken chaos of terraces and knolls, dotted with boulders of chalk and sandstone. This ruin of nature has long been overgrown by rich greenery, mantling its asperities, all the more since the charms and mildness of the situation go to making it a much trimmed wilderness, populated with villages and villas that turn the Undercliff into one great garden of choice and luxuriant vegetation.

The capital of the Undercliff is Ventnor, whose dependencies and outposts straggle almost all along this sheltered coast-strip. Now the most beautifully placed and the most widely admired town in the Island, it has risen to such note within the memory of men still living. A century ago Sir H. Englefield gives it a word as “a neat hamlet,” while guide-books of his day do not even name it between the older villages of St Lawrence and Bonchurch, that on either side wing its body of terraces and zigzag streets. Its history seems illustrated in the old “Crab and Lobster” Inn, from a modest haunt of fishermen developed into a spacious hotel, and still more plainly in the monuments of so many a young life close packed about its nineteenth century churches. It was Sir James Clarke, an esteemed physician of our great-grandfathers’ day, who dubbed Ventnor an English Madeira, and brought it into medical repute as a rival of Torquay, both of them disputing the honour of having the mildest winter climate in England, which probably belongs rather to the Cornish coast, or to other claimants still wanting a vates sacer, that is, a London doctor to give them bold advertisement.

The shift in medical opinion as to the cure of consumption by pure and dry air, however cold, must have somewhat blown upon Ventnor’s reputation; and it may in future come to depend upon its amenities as much as on the soft climate, now that Mentone itself seems rather shy of its old character as a rendezvous for consumptive germs. It has a summer as well as a winter season; but there is not much to be said for its bathing and boating, the shore here being rougher than on the east side, and exposed to dangerous currents. The beach before the esplanade has been tamed a little and brought under the yoke of bathing machines. Further along there are here and there tempting strips of sand; but swimmers may be cautioned as to launching forth too trustfully. The same hint applies to boating, this coast being best navigated with the help of someone who knows its reefs and eddies. Ventnor visitors are more ready to make jaunts on land than by sea; and in fine weather their favourite amusement is supplied by the coaches, brakes, and other vehicles which carry them to all parts of the Island. There are daily excursions in the season to Freshwater, Cowes, and other remote points; besides morning and afternoon trips to Blackgang, Shanklin, and such nearer goals; and the stranger will have much ado to deny the insinuating recruiters who at every corner of the High Street lie in wait to enlist him for their crew of pleasure-seekers.

The strong point of the town is its picturesque site, which, indeed, implies the defects of its qualities, having been termed “fit for kangaroos” by some short-winded critic. Nature never meant herself here to be laid out in streets, and eligible plots of building land have to be taken as they can be found on the steep slope. This fact, however favourable to scenic effect, proves a little trying to those feeble folk who make so large a part of the population. Communication with the different levels of the town, where the climate varies according to their degree of elevation and protection, has to be effected by steep stairs, winding ascents, and devious roads; and often one’s goal seems provokingly near, while it turns out to be tiresomely far by the only available access. One thoroughfare is so precipitous that a railing has been provided for the aid of those risking its descent. The twisting High Street debouches into a hollow, prettily laid out, about which are the most sheltered parts of the town. Here stands the pier with its shelters and pavilion; and a short esplanade curves round the little bay to a rocky point, from which other zigzags remount to the higher quarters. There has been a proposal to extend this esplanade along the Bonchurch side of the shore, where the gasworks certainly do not form a very pleasant or convenient obstruction; but on the whole it appears better to leave Ventnor as it is. Its great charm consists of being as unlike as possible to the general type of seaside resorts; and its irregular architecture, wilful roads, and provoking impasses are at least in harmony with each other.

Let us see how it strikes a stranger—Mr W. D. Howells, to wit—on a recent visit.

But this appreciative stranger is a little at sea in freely dashing into his sketch a background of “seats and parks of nobility and gentry,” which seems somewhat of an American exaggeration for the villaed skirts of Ventnor. The most lordly “seat” about Ventnor is Steephill Castle, at the west end, from the tower of which flaunts his own Stars and Stripes to proclaim it the home of a compatriot who must have reason to chuckle, as he does in a volume of memoirs, that slow, simple, honest John Bull now wakes up to let himself be exploited by Transatlantic enterprise. This gentleman’s daughter was the late popular novelist “John Oliver Hobbes,” who latterly lived much here, or in the neighbourhood. The modern castle, that has housed an empress in its time, took the place of a cottage of gentility built by Hans Stanley, George III.’s Governor of the Island. It formerly belonged to the Hamborough family, whose heir met with his death in a painful way, that gave rise to what was known as the Ardlamont murder case.

The trustees of this family have lately been at loggerheads with the Ventnor people as to enclosing the links by the shore. Part of the cliff here, however, has been acquired as a prettily unconventional public park, laid out with playing greens beneath its leafy mazes and airy walks. At this end, opposite the west gate of the park, is the station of the mid-island line, distinguished as “Ventnor Town,” whereas “Ventnor” station of the older east coast rail stands so high above the sea that access to it suggests the “stations” of a pilgrimage. The last time I was in Ventnor, I had the pleasure of being able to assist some countrywomen of Mr Howell’s whom I found fluttering in breathless doubt between those two confusing goals, that ought to be joined by some kind of mountain railway.

One advantage of having attained the upper station, is that here one is half-way up the steep bank rising behind Ventnor to be the highest point of the Island, nearly 800 feet. This down bears the name of St Boniface, in honour of whom passing ships used to lower their topsails. The ridge is reached by chalky paths from a road near the station, and from other approaches at the top of the town; and however stuffy the air may be below, the perspiring climber will not fail to find invigoration on the open crest. For goal of the ascent, there is a wishing-well, as to which old tradition has it that, if you reach the spot, Orpheus-like, without casting a backward glance, the wish you may form while drinking of its welcome spring will speedily be fulfilled. Certainly no finer view could be wished for than one gains from the summit and along a wide stretch of rambles on either hand. Holding on round a horse-shoe hollow, one may turn down on the right to Shanklin; or, in the other direction, crossing the rail and road to Ryde at Wroxall, pass over to the heights of Appuldurcombe, where the Worsley monument makes a beacon. Hence another lofty sweep brings one back to Ventnor by Week Down and Rew Down, used as a golf ground, which must try the strength of elderly devotees on their preliminary ascent to the clubhouse, standing out like an Alpine chapel.

The stiff-kneed pilgrim who has not heart for such arduosities, may follow the road along the face of St Boniface Down, or the sea-walk below, to Bonchurch, that choice and lovely east-end of Ventnor, clustered round a pond, overhung by a rich bank of foliage. The mildness of the climate is attested by huge arbutus growths, recalling those of Killarney, by fuchsias like trees, with trunks as thick as a strong man’s wrist, and by scarlet geraniums of such exuberance that a single plant will cover several square yards of wall in front of a house. This one fact, more than any word-painting, gives an idea of the way in which Bonchurch, and indeed most parts of Ventnor, are embowered by foliage. In all sorts of odd nooks, either nestling against the steep wall of the Undercliff, or hiding away in its leafy hollows, perch the picturesque cottages and handsome villas that have attracted only too many neighbours. The road is much shut in between walls of private grounds, within which are enclosed some of the finest spots, such as the “Pulpit Rock,” a projecting mass of sandstone marked by a cross, and another known as the “Flagstaff Rock.”

Threading our way between these forbidden paradises, the road would take us up by the new Church with its sadly beautiful graveyard. A lane turns steeply downwards past the old church, now disused, one of the many smallest churches in England, that has the further note of being the sole wholly Norman structure in the Island. Here are buried the Rev. W. Adams, author of the Shadow of the Cross, and John Sterling, Carlyle’s friend, who came to die at Hillside, now a boarding-house near the upper station at Ventnor. Another literary celebrity who lived here was Elizabeth Sewell, whose Amy Herbert and other edifying novels were so popular in her own generation; and in one of them, Ursula, she has described the scenery about her home.

The old church is said to be now in danger of slipping down towards the sea. Below it, one descends to Monks’ Bay, traditional landing-place of the French Benedictines who made themselves once so much at home on the Island, as their spiritual descendants are doing now. The sea-walk round

this bay leads into the Landslip, so called par excellence, as the rawest and wildest disturbance of the Undercliff, its last fall being not yet a century old. This wilderness of overgrown knolls and hillocks, tumbled from the crags above, is not to be equalled on our south coast unless by the similar chaos near Lyme Regis, whose broken and bosky charms have been stirred into fresh picturesqueness by slips of more recent date. Over daisied turf one here takes a twisting path that leads by banks of bracken and bramble into thickets of gnarled thorn and other blossoming shade, half-burying green mounds and grey boulders in a tangle where one would soon lose oneself but for occasional glimpses of the sea below, or for running upon the wall of a private enclosure behind, guide for the wanderer in his descent towards Luccombe Chine, who can also ascend to the cliff-walk for Shanklin. The scene is thus described by Thomas Webster, a geologist who visited it a century ago, while the first convulsion was still fresh, before the last slip of 1818 came to make confusion worse confounded.

A considerable portion of the cliff had fallen down, strewing the whole of the ground between it and the sea with its ruins; huge masses of solid rock started up amidst heaps of smaller fragments; whilst immense quantities of loose marl, mixed with stones, and even the soil above with the wheat still growing on it, filled up the spaces between, and formed hills of rubbish which are scarcely accessible. Nothing had resisted the force of the falling rocks. Trees were levelled with the ground, and many lay half buried in the ruins. The streams were choked up, and pools of water were formed in many places. Whatever road or path formerly existed through this place had been effaced; and with some difficulty I passed over this avalanche, which extended many hundred yards. Proceeding eastwards, the whole of the soil seemed to have been moved, and was filled with chasms and bushes lying in every direction. The intricate and rugged path became gradually less distinct, and soon divided into mere sheep tracks, leading into an almost impenetrable thicket. I perceived, however, on my left hand, the lofty wall of rock which belonged to the same stratum as the Undercliff, softened in its rugged character by the foliage which grew in its fissures, and still preserving some remains of its former picturesque beauty. Neglect, and the unfortunate accident which had lately happened, had now altered the features of this once delightful spot; and I was soon bewildered among rocks, streams of water, tangling thorns, and briars.